Solomon & Smith

* Sam's full list pasted below *Please help us continue having these discussions on Patreon, or follow us on other Podcast channels here: https://linktr.ee/solomon_smith1800s - Shank's Mare - Ikku Jippensha1810s - Frankenstein - Mary Shelley1820s - Ballads and Romances - Adam Mickiewicz1830s - Eugene Onegin.- Alexander Pushkin1840s - Courtesans and Opium - The Ignoramus of Yangzhou1850s - Moby Dick - Hermann Melville1860s - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll1870s - The Gaucho Martin Fierro - Jose Hernandez1880s - The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoevsky1890s - Selected Writings - Leopoldo Lugones00:00 Introduction04:40 Apocalyptic American Culture06:26 How Sam Got into Reading09:19 1800s13:09 1810s16:09 1820s19:52 1830s23:40 1840s30:16 1850s33:17 1860s38:03 1870s42:11 1880s48:10 1890s

Please help us continue having these discussions on Patreon, or follow us on other Podcast channels here: https://linktr.ee/solomon_smith00:00 Intro 03:52 What is Canon?05:38 Canon debates in Abrahamic Religions08:50 How this maps onto Star Wars (in depth)17:41 Lore, Doctrine, and Talmudic gloss19:06 Why does Canon matter so much? Ancient Greece24:17 The obsession with continuity and internal errors28:47 Pirate editions, off-brand intellectual property, Virgil, Dickens, and Cervantes33:30 True Canon exists in human imagination35:29 Adaptation: books to films - Tolkien’s obsession with Canon40:18 Tennyson and Milton - Jackson is to Tolkien what Virgil is to Homer what Christianity is to Judaism45:46 Liberty to contradict47:40 A chamber drama set on Kamino - gibberish words

Theo Rollason joins Milo and Jack to discuss Queer Edward II, their new film built from thirty hours of unseen footage shot during the making of Derek Jarman’s Edward II, and to trace Jarman’s film back through Christopher Marlowe to the medieval king himself. Along the way: Jarman turns Renaissance history into Thatcher-era queer politics, Marlowe makes class more scandalous than homosexuality, Tilda Swinton transforms Isabella into a vampiric villain, Edward’s murder becomes entangled with AIDS and Jarman’s own mortality, Peter Greenaway attracts some professional jealousy, and a lost archive reveals the funny, chaotic, intimate reality of making one of British queer cinema’s defining films.00:00 – Introduction05:36 – Theo Rollason enters11:52 – What Makes a Derek Jarman Film?22:01 – How Jarman Reimagined Edward II29:23 – Gay Love and Gay History37:05 – Tilda Swinton: Queen of Thatcher45:36 – Marlowe and Jarman: Kindred Artists50:48 – Death & the AIDS Crisis58:38 – 30 Hours of Lost Edward II Footage1:03:50…

00:00 Introduction04:38 Lolita Summary10:50 Did Epstein actually read/like Lolita?14:32 Epstein's upbringing - boomer sexuality19:51 Did male boomers create modern sexuality?24:21 Differences between Epstein and Humbert28:29 Do we all want to be children forever?30:35 Our desires have been created for us32:27 The modelling industry34:55 Creation: of oneself, of others36:30 Britney Spears, Olivia Rodrigo, Sabrina Carpenter38:37 Piper Rockelle: the Gen Alpha twist on the American Dream41:53 Creation in Lolita - The ending45:34 Lolita - controversial then and now, for different reasons48:19 To write a book properly, it needs to be misread50:48 The paradoxes of our age around children and sex53:13 Why Gen Z are turning away from boomer sex57:10 Conclusion - Epstein is a boring loser.

Please help us continue having these discussions on Patreon, or follow us on other Podcast channels here: https://linktr.ee/solomon_smithRichard Barakat's *Faust the Magician* is available here: https://shorturl.at/CDWx0See also the below discussions:Richard Barakat: The Literary Collective (Spring 2025): https://youtu.be/rwecUdt0p28Richard Barakat: Philosophic Dialogues from La Frontera (Spring 2024): https://youtu.be/YiiZbUErFcARichard Barakat joins us to explore the strange relationship between poetry, magic, and the Devil, beginning with Marlowe and Goethe’s Faust tellings and ending with Richard’s own apocalyptic Faust for the 21st century. Along the way: Pindar raises men towards the gods, Ovid turns poetry into immortality, Yeats makes images into magical powers, paganism and Christianity collide and combine, artistic genius edges towards possession, and Faust’s desire to transcend the human becomes inseparable from the old suspicion that the arts are, somehow, the Devil’s domain.00:00 – Are the Arts…

Please help us continue having these discussions on Patreon, or follow us on other Podcast channels here: https://linktr.ee/solomon_smith00:00:00 Intro00:05:30 Ramon arrives - poetic epigraph00:06:30 What does it mean for God to Speak?00:09:47 Is Arabic Special? Is it older than Nature?00:12:04 Is the Quran translated into Arabic from Transcendent Speech?00:14:11 Could putting God's words in a human language degrade them?00:18:41 Are Arabic speakers especially chosen by God? Is Islam exclusive?00:23:05 Should all Muslims learn Classical Arabic?00:25:48 If you have two sentences that say the same thing in different words, could they both be from God?00:32:49 What is the basis of the Quran's authority?00:39:21 Variants of the Quran00:48:22 The first printed Qurans. Literacy.00:52:55 Can deaf illiterate people experience the Quran?00:56:55 The mysteries of meaning. How do words mean things?01:01:40 Is beauty truth? Is the Quran beautiful?01:12:37 Would God choose to reveal himself in common language?01:16:13…

Please help us continue having these discussions on Patreon, or follow us on other Podcast channels here: https://linktr.ee/solomon_smith00:00:00 Intro00:07:38 Why Does Consciousness Break Science00:10:40 Is Life Special? Biophychism: Is Life Consciousness?00:14:40 Are Observations (Quantum Physics) Dependent on Consciousness?00:18:10 A Unique Element of Consciousness, distinguishing it from Life00:21:25 Why is Consciousness Not A Vague Concept?00:26:40 Are Our Brains Lying to Us? Is Consciousness an Illusion00:32:58 Is Artificial Intelligence Conscious?00:35:00 Epiphenomenalism00:39:25 The Matrix and Divorce of Mind and Reality00:42:25 How Much of Our Awareness Relies on Sense Data?00:48:40 Pure Being and Pure Consciousness00:52:12 Panpsychism, and how it solves the problem of consciousness00:56:45 Mysterianism and Colin McGinn00:59:06 Is Panpsychism just sexed-up materialism?01:03:17 Weak vs. Strong Emergence01:07:25 Is Panpsychism an Imaginary Science?01:10:45 Consciousness is Integrated…

Please help us continue having these discussions on Patreon, or follow us on other Podcast channels here: https://linktr.ee/solomon_smithTaylor returns to take Milo and Jack through ten great works of American "Gnostic" literature, beginning with Emerson’s Nature and ending, exactly a century later, with Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! Along the way: Jones Very believes himself to be Christ, Hawthorne discovers the stain in creation, Ahab declares war on visible reality, Whitman meets the “real Me”, Dickinson confronts an inaccessible God, and Melville, Bierce, West, and Faulkner push the American suspicion of the world into ever darker territory.Part two of our Gnostic Bonanza; the first part - on the original Gnostics - available here: https://youtu.be/brOyXDlaA-Y?si=DQGCLCq61lwZm4PGCHAPTERS00:00 Introduction03:24 I. Ralph Waldo Emerson – Nature (1836)11:15 II. Jones Very – Essays and Poems (1839)18:48 III. Nathaniel Hawthorne – Mosses from an Old Manse (1846)24:46 IV. Herman Melville – Moby-Dick (1851)34:55…

Please help us continue having these discussions by supporting us over on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/SolomonSmithSolomon & Smith on Apple:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/solomon-smith/id6808681930On Spotify:https://open.spotify.com/show/2DkVPzTS5lHkynSlHMyOL2?si=FsVpIakbR861Vg9jM3WZvQ&utm_source=copy-linkOn Amazon:https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/7ca1e4c1-2e5a-4691-9c32-35c05fc01f05On iHeart:https://iheart.com/podcast/343165456In this episode of Solomon and Smith, Jack and Milo speak with Taylor Caron about the Gnostics: those strange, alluring, heretical early Christians who believed that the physical world was corrupt, that its creator was not the highest God, and that salvation came through secret knowledge of the divine world beyond this one.This is the first part of a two-part conversation. In this episode, we begin with the original Gnostics: the lost gospels, the Nag Hammadi texts, the Gospel of Thomas, the Secret Book of John, the Gospel of Judas, Valentinus, the Gospel of Truth,…

Please help us continue having these discussions by supporting us over on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/SolomonSmithWhat is a view? What is attention? Does a number become more real if it is larger? Are advertisers being ushered into a hall of mirrors? And if every video, every creator, every athlete, every billionaire, and every man on earth can be given a bigger number, have we made the world better — or simply made value meaningless?We discuss YouTube views, attention inflation, dead internet paradise, advertisers, Zimbabwean trillionaires, egalitarianism, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, cinema box office inflation, World of Warcraft stat squish, the psychological horror of decline, the impossibility of measuring attention, the parable of the workers in the vineyard, angelic value, Christianity, equality, and whether every mote of dust has infinite worth.Chapters:00:00 The number goes up00:51 Introduction04:45 YouTube changes the view count08:02 Advertisers and the fantasy economy12:40 Do labels change…

Please help us continue having these discussions by supporting us over on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/SolomonSmithThinkers mentioned: Richard Dawkins, Noam Chomsky, Jerry Fodor, Charles Darwin, Paul Grice, Fred Dretske, Gottlob Frege, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Saul Kripke, Richard Montague, Iain McGilchrist, Alfred Tarski00:00:00 Introduction00:04:49 Knife Throwing, Other Athletic Activities00:11:57 Poetic Epigraph00:13:05 How to integrate Philosophy, Linguistics, and Biology? Should philosophers read Dawkins? Should biologists read Tarski?00:20:15 Origins of language. Are any aspects of language as old as consciousness?00:27:39 Can we only discuss language in language?00:29:06 Are all philosophical problems linguistic? Analytic philosophy00:32:45 Fodor and the Language of thought. Language without communication00:34:50 Consciousness and the limits of knowing00:39:38 Can something exist without you knowing it?00:42:40 Can we understand/build a mind? 00:43:49 Links between Mysterianism and Apathatic…

Please help us continue having these discussions by supporting us over on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/SolomonSmithKirwin's article on mathematics is available here: https://kirwinhampshire.substack.com/p/the-dark-night-of-mathematicsIn this episode of Solomon and Smith, Jack and Milo speak with Kirwin Hampshire, mathematics PhD and author of the Substack Ossuray Lost at Sea.Is mathematics discovered or invented? Is it a formal game, a spiritual art form, a machine for generating truth, or the highest expression of human creativity? And what happens when AI begins solving open problems, producing counterexamples, and doing the thing mathematicians thought belonged to the strange, private, intuitive life of the mind?We discuss what a number is, why mathematics feels certain in a way other forms of knowledge often do not, whether infinity and zero expand the limits of thought, and why mathematical discovery can feel closer to art, wizardry, or religious revelation than to ordinary technical work. Then we…

*Emma's list is pasted below*Please help us to continue having these conversations on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/solomonsmith/membershipEmma's channel can be found at: https://youtube.com/@sarcastic_fish?si=J3bGM11vCKSxpt3p1710s - Robinson Crusoe: Daniel Defoe1720s - Roxana: Daniel Defoe1730s - Manon Lescaut: Abbé Prévost1740s - Pamela: Samuel Richardson1750s - The Female Quixote: Charlotte Lennox1760s - Barren Decade - TBR: Castle of Otranto, A Sentimental Journey1770s - The Sorrows of Young Werther: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe1780s - Dangerous Liasons: Pierre Choderlos de Laclos1790s - Justine: Marquis de Sade1800s - Corinne, or Italy: Madame de Staël1810s - Frankenstein: Mary Shelley1820s - Barren Decade - TBR: The Betrothed1830s - The Charterhouse of Parma: Stendhal1840s - The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas00:00:00 Intro00:04:35 What's so interesting about the 1700s?00:06:53 1710s00:11:30 1720s00:14:54 1730s00:20:19 1740s00:24:04 1750s00:29:38 1760s00:33:00 1770s00:36:00 1780s00:43:40…

Please help us to continue having these conversations on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/solomonsmith/membershipYou can buy Igor's books directly from his publishing house here: https://songpublishing.org/?v=b6bb43df4525In this wide-ranging conversation, artist and spiritual teacher Igor Kufayev talks with Jack and Milo about consciousness, meditation, Kashmir Shaivism (Trika Shaivism), aesthetics, creativity and the relationship between spiritual experience and everyday perception.He reflects on a profound early meditation experience that transformed his relationship with his body and consciousness, and the moment he put Heidegger aside in favour of seeking direct experience rather than intellectual understanding.The conversation moves from Western philosophy to the Bhagavad Gita, Kashmir Shaivism, Abhinavagupta and the concept of camatkāra—the rapture or astonishment of aesthetic experience. We also explore how ordinary reality became dull, whether consciousness actually creates the world we experience,…

*- Cecily's list is pasted below -*Please help us to keep having these conversations by supporting us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/solomonsmith/membershipCheck out Cecily's Substack here: https://cecilycarver.substack.com/Tremolo expertly demonstrated by Edson Lopes, who can be heard here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTBiNRT3GPM1800sThe Earthquake in Chile - Heinrich von Kleist1810sPersuasion - Jane Austen1820sThe Tale of Kieu - Nguyen Du1830sThe Queen of Spades - Alexander Pushkin1840sCousin Bette - Honoré de Balzac1850sMadame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert1860sGreat Expectations - Charles Dickens1870sMiddlemarch - George Eliot1880sThe Portrait of a Lady - Henry James1890sThe Seagull - Anton Chekhov1900sThe House of Mirth - Edith Wharton1910sIn Search of Lost Time - Marcel Proust1920sThe Magic Mountain - Thomas Mann1930sRebecca - Daphne du Maurier1940sMildred Pierce - James M. Cain1950sLolita - Vladimir Nabokov1960sThe Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - Muriel Spark1970sFifth Business - Robertson…

Please help us continue having these discussions by supporting us over on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/SolomonSmithKaren Kilby is the Bede Professor of Catholic Theology at Durham University, and one of the most interesting contemporary thinkers on the Trinity, apophatic theology, and the limits of theological understanding.In this conversation, Jack and Milo talk to Karen about whether Christians should expect to make sense of their own beliefs. Is theology a noble intellectual discipline, a useful service to the Church, or sometimes just a very elaborate waste of time? Do theologians know more about God than ordinary believers? Or is the attempt to master God intellectually already a mistake?The discussion focuses especially on the Trinity. What does it mean to say that God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? Is the doctrine clearly present in Scripture, or was it developed by the early Church as Christians tried to make sense of their worship of Christ? Why three persons rather than two, four, or…

Please help us to continue having these conversations on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/solomonsmith/membership00:00:00 Introduction00:05:34 Jeff arrives00:11:09 Footballers are the most complete human beings0013:57 Do Aliens have human aesthetics? Evolution.00:17:56 Poetic Epigraph - Goethean Darwinism00:22:04 What is a Mind?00:27:27 Hypnotism - Milton Erickson00:33:34 Dreams and Time, Lucid Dreaming00:44:50 Dreams and Technology00:49:19 Why suffering will never end, and why that's okay00:53:00 Stanford Prison Experiment - other experiments01:00:45 Post Modernism and its Discontents01:02:15 The Insane Dream that Melted Jeff's Brain01:10:07 Eugene Gendlin - pausing01:22:14 Plato's epistemology - inaccessible knowledge - ambiguity01:27:48 Are eloquent people doomed to insanity? David Foster Wallace - Hamlet01:37:45 Shakespeare's Sonnets01:45:45 Shakespeare's Self-Sabotaging Empathy01:50:55 Gateway Sonnets - Some of our favourites02:01:43 Sonnet 31 - Wow!02:04:29 Crazy Numerological Patterns in the Sonnet…

*- Adam's list is pasted below -*Please help us to keep having these conversations by supporting us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/solomonsmith/membershipIn this video Adam discusses his favourite works of fiction decade by decade, starting in 1800 and going 200 years, decade by decade, until they reach the borders of our present century. If you would like to be interviewed by us about your favourite books, please send an email.1800sElective Affinities - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe1810sThe Golden Pot - E.T.A. Hoffmann1820sMelmoth the Wanderer - Charles Maturin1830sThe Charterhouse of Parma - Stendhal1840sLost Illusions - Honoré de Balzac1850sSylvie - Gérard de Nerval1860sOur Mutual Friend - Charles Dickens1870sDemons - Fyodor Dostoevsky1880sThe Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas - Machado de Assis1890sThe Christ and Antichrist Trilogy - Dmitry Merezhkovsky1900sHadji Murat - Leo Tolstoy1910sIn Search of Lost Time - Marcel Proust1920sRakes of the Old Court - Mateiu Caragiale1930sA Glastonbury Romance -…

Please help us continue having these discussions by supporting us over on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/SolomonSmithElaine Hobby is one of the foremost experts in the work of Aphra Behn: the greatest playwright of the Restoration, and one of the greatest woman writers of all.In this conversation, Jack and Milo talk to Elaine specifically about Aphra Behn's theatre: how did it differ from her contemporaries; what made it so great; how did a woman who began her career as a spy in the employ of Charles II find her way to the stage; and what was the secret to her enduring popular success?The discussion also covers the history of the Restoration stage, returning as it did from the ban under Cromwell's Commonwealth. How did women end up acting, a profession once restricted to men? How did Charles II's personal tastes influence the theatre? We also analyse the types and plots used by Behn in her plays, and the way she bends traditional structure to her art. Was her theatre entirely comic? Or does it contain a…

Please help us continue having these discussions by supporting us over on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/SolomonSmith- Our full lists are pasted below -1970-1974Jack's Pick: Amarcord, dir. Federico FelliniMilo's Pick: Aguirre, the Wrath of God, dir. Werner Herzog1975-1979Jack's Pick: Monty Python's Life of Brian, dir. Terry JonesMilo's Pick: All That Jazz, dir. Bob Fosse1980-1984Jack's Pick: Koyaanisqatsi, dir. Godfrey ReggioMilo's Pick: The Draughtsman's Contract, dir. Peter Greenaway1985-1989Jack's Pick: Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, dir. Pedro AlmodóvarMilo's Pick: Ran, dir. Akira Kurosawa1990-1994Jack's Pick: 32 Short Films About Glenn Gould, dir. François GirardMilo's Pick: The Long Day Closes, dir. Terence Davies1995-1999Jack's Pick: Eyes Wide Shut, dir. Stanley KubrickMilo's Pick: The Thin Red Line, dir. Terrence Malick2000-2004Jack's Pick: Mulholland Drive, dir. David LynchMilo's Pick: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, dir. Peter Jackson2005-2009Jack's Pick: King…

Oliver Ready is one of the world's greatest translators of Russian literature, most famous for his translation of Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. In this conversation with Jack and Milo, he speaks about what makes Dostoevsky's prose so distinctive, direct, and contemporary, and why Vladimir Sharov may be the greatest Russian novelist you've never read.The discussion covers Dostoevsky's literary reputation, Nabokov's famous criticism of his work, the art of literary translation, Russian history, and, in the latter part, Sharov's astonishing novels, which blend theology, politics, history, and surreal imagination into something unlike anything else in modern literature.Subscribe if you enjoy discussions of literature, philosophy, history, and the greatest novels ever written.Topics discussed: Oliver Ready's translation of Crime and Punishment What makes Dostoevsky's writing unique Nabokov vs. Dostoevsky Vladimir Sharov's extraordinary novels Before and During The Rehearsals Russian literature and…

Please help us continue having these discussions by supporting us over on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/SolomonSmith- Our full lists are pasted below -1915-1919Jack's Pick: Intolerance, dir. D.W. GriffithMilo's Pick: Terje Vigen, dir. Victor Sjörström1920-1924Jack's Pick: Häxan, dir. Benjamin ChristensenMilo's Pick: Die Niebelungen, dir. Fritz Lang1925-1929Jack's Pick: Sunrise, dir. F.W. MurnauMilo's Pick: Napoleon, dir. Abel Gance1930-1934Jack's Pick: M, dir. Fritz LangMilo's Pick: Twentieth Century, dir. Howard Hawks1935-1939Jack's Pick: The Adventures of Robin Hood, dir. Michael CurtizMilo's Pick: Olympia Part 1 (prelude), dir. Leni Riefenstahl1940-1944Jack's Pick: Fantasia, dir. VariousMilo's Pick: Ivan the Terrible Part 1, dir. Sergei Eisenstein1945-1949Jack's Pick: It's a Wonderful Life, dir. Frank CapraMilo's Pick: The Third Man, dir. Carol Reed1950-1954Jack's Pick: Singin' in the Rain, dir. Stanley DonenMilo's Pick: Early Summer, dir. Yasujiro Ozu1955-1959Jack's Pick: Madhumati, dir. Bimal…

Please help us to keep having these conversations by supporting us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/solomonsmith/membershipIn this conversation, Achsah Guibbory joins Jack and Milo to discuss John Donne, John Milton, love, sex, sin, marriage, desire, Paradise Lost, and the problem of whether erotic love can ever be holy.Donne and Milton are two of the great Johns of seventeenth-century English poetry, claimed by some to be entirely different men. Donne is witty, erotic, devotional, cynical, sacred, obscene, metaphysical, and impossible to pin down. Milton is austere, sublime, political, theological, revolutionary, authoritarian, and not much fun at a party. Yet both poets return, in radically different ways, to the same infinity: love.The discussion begins with the word itself. What did “love” mean in the seventeenth century, before Darwin, before Freud, and before modern romantic individualism? How did English poetry inherit older distinctions between erotic love, spiritual love, charity, friendship,…

Please help us continue having these discussions by supporting us over on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/SolomonSmithThe smartphone has quietly assassinated humanity's greatest invention.In this discussion, we explore the decline of deep reading. An obligatory video for all book-based channels. We look at the atomic annihilation of literacy, attention spans, memory, and critical thinking. A crazy Faustian twist: though we have access to more information than ever before, we are actually losing the ability to read and think.Topics discussed: Why smartphones are changing the way our brains process information The decline of reading for pleasure AI, ChatGPT, and the miserable future of literacy Gen Z, attention spans, and digital culture Books vs. short-form gunk The printing press, literacy, and the miserable future of 'civilisation'

Please help us continue having these discussions by supporting us over on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/SolomonSmithWho wrote the Quran? Did it flow directly from God? Did Muhammad compose it? Did several authors compose it over several centuries? Does it have the characteristics of a dictated text, or a written text? How simple or complicated is the story of the Quran's origins?In this episode, Jack and Milo are joined by Islamic studies scholar Gabriel Said Reynolds to explore one of the most controversial questions in Islamic Studies.The conversation examines the traditional Islamic account of the Quran alongside modern academic perspectives. Reynolds argues that the evidence may point toward a more complex process of composition than is commonly assumed, challenging the long-standing Western, secular scholarly consensus that Muhammad himself was the sole human author.Topics include:• Who wrote the Quran?• Did Muhammad write the Quran?• The traditional Islamic narrative of revelation• Academic…

Please help us to keep having these conversations by supporting us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/solomonsmith/membershipIn this conversation, James D. Reid joins Jack and Milo to discuss Novalis: poet, philosopher, natural scientist, early German Romantic, and perhaps the greatest pen name in literary history.Novalis — born Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg — died of tuberculosis just before his twenty-ninth birthday, yet left behind one of the strangest and most suggestive bodies of work in European Romanticism. Reid discusses Novalis as a thinker who refuses ordinary divisions between philosophy, poetry, religion, science, nature, and love. Was he a poet doing philosophy, a philosopher writing poetry, or some bizarre contortion of the two: a philosopher for whom poetry was the only possible means of philosophizing.The discussion begins with Novalis’s life and intellectual world: Kant, Fichte, Schlegel, Schleiermacher, Schelling, the Freiberg Mining Academy, early German Romanticism,…

*- Andrew's list is pasted below -*Please help us to keep having these conversations by supporting us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/solomonsmith/membershipIn this video Andrew discusses his favourite works of fiction decade by decade, starting in 1800 and going 200 years, decade by decade, until they reach the borders of our present century. If you would like to be interviewed by us about your favourite books, please send an email.Two bonus decades are available over on Patreon!1800sTales from Shakespeare - Mary & Charles Lamb1810sPride & Prejudice - Jane Austen1820sA barren decade.1830sThe Pickwick Papers - Charles Dickens1840sVanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray1850sMada-- Bleak House - Charles Dickens1860sAlice's Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll1870sMiddlemarch - George Eliot1880sTreasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson1890sThe Diary of a Nobody - George & Weedon Grossmith1900sThe Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame1910sHoward's End - E.M. Forster1920sA High Wind in Jamaica -…

Please help us to keep having these conversations by supporting us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/solomonsmith/membershipIn this conversation, Scott McGill and Susanna Wright join Jack and Milo to discuss their recent translation of Virgil’s *Aeneid*: one of the foundational poems of Roman literature, a work of exile, empire, grief, violence, duty, divine terror, and extraordinary poetic control.The conversation begins with the problem of collaboration: how do two translators produce one poem? McGill and Wright discuss the six-year process of translating the *Aeneid* together, from early divided drafts to an intensely collaborative line-by-line revision, and reflect on what it means to develop a single poetic voice out of two sensibilities.Much of the discussion centres on Virgil’s style: his elevation without bombast, his emotional restraint, his “majesty of sadness,” his difference from Ovid, and the challenge of translating a poem that is at once ancient, literary, musical, political, and deeply…

Harry Potter, the work of a 'socialist', is in love with the trappings of the upper-class. The wizarding world is based entirely on the aesthetics Britain's elite institutions. It is not the story of an outsider, but a fantasy about inheritance, privilege, and belonging to an ancient, racially pure elite.In this episode, we discuss Harry Potter as a British class allegory.We discuss- Hogwarts' resemblance to elite boarding schools and Oxford colleges- The contrast between the suburbian pleb Dursleys and the rustic pleb Weasleys- Harry Potter as an aristocrat trapped in suburbia- The relationship between magic, bloodlines, and social hierarchy- JK Rowling's internally conflicting attitudes toward modernity, tradition, and class- The influence of Charles Dickens and J.R.R. Tolkien on the Pottiverse- Hogwarts as an escape from modern, middle-class life and cultural rootlessness00:00 Intro01:21 The Hype04:10 Rowling's main weaknesses08:03 Rowling's main strengths10:28 HP as Gay Allegory12:26 HP as Class…

Please help us to keep having these conversations by supporting us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/solomonsmith/membershipIn this episode of Solomon & Smith, Jack and Milo speak with classicist and translator Stephanie McCarter about her acclaimed translation of one of the most influential works in Western literature, Ovid's Metamorphoses.Ovid retold Greek myths of transformation, and in so doing transformed Greek mythology. We talk about why Roman writers saw translation as an act of cultural conquest, and about what is gained and lost when Latin poetry is brought across into modern English. McCarter discusses her approach to translating Ovid, her decision to render sexual violence explicitly rather than euphemistically, and why she believes no translation can ever be faithful.We discuss Roman attitudes toward Greece, the philosophy of transformation, the poetic differences between Ovid, Virgil, and Horace, the politics of translation, and why Ovid remains one of the most modern voices from the…

Please help us to keep having these conversations by supporting us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/solomonsmith/membershipIn this conversation, Professor Ritchie Robertson joins Jack and Milo to discuss Thomas Mann’s *The Magic Mountain*: one of the great modern European novels, a thousand-page comic-philosophical epic about illness, love, death, time, politics, and the fate of humanism.Ritchie Robertson is one of the leading English-speaking scholars of German and European literature. He is the author of a major study of the Enlightenment, general editor of the current Oxford World’s Classics Thomas Mann translations, and translator of Mann’s *Death in Venice* and *Doctor Faustus*. Here, he helps us situate *The Magic Mountain* within Mann’s wider work, German intellectual history, and the political crises of the early twentieth century.The discussion begins with the Enlightenment, and with the novel’s two great intellectual antagonists: Settembrini, the liberal humanist and advocate of progress, and…

Please help us to keep having these conversations by supporting us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/solomonsmith/membershipThis discussion is largely a response to some of the reactions to our most recent DBH interview. We discuss Nietzsche, Chesterton, antisemitism, Christianity, nihilism, morality, Nazism, Darwinism, Schopenhauer, and On the Genealogy of Morals.We examine Nietzsche's critique of Christian morality, his relationship to Nazism, the influence of Darwin and Schopenhauer on his philosophy, and why Genealogy of Morals remains so provocative.00:00 Introduction02:28 Chesterton's claim that Hitlerism was "Jewish"05:19 Conspiracy theory that Nazism was a Jewish plot06:38 Nietzsche, Judaism, and Christianity08:00 Christianity as the universalisation of ressentiment10:48 Was Nietzsche a precursor to Nazism?12:42 Nietzsche, Darwin, and evolutionary thought13:13 Schopenhauer, the Will, and Darwinism16:06 First impressions of Genealogy of Morals18:16 Nietzsche's style21:16 Reading Nietzsche for the…

Please help us to keep having these conversations by supporting us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/solomonsmith/membershipAll My Precious Madness is available at bookshops, both good and evil.In this conversation, novelist Mark Bowles joins Jack and Milo to discuss his debut novel All My Precious Madness, a voice-driven, rage-filled, lyrical work about Henry Nash: an academic turned telesales worker whose inner life spills out through invective, memory, fantasy, grief, class resentment, and strange beauty.The discussion begins with Mark’s early reading life, from Treasure Island and Enid Blyton to the shock of discovering Samuel Beckett. We talk about Beckett’s stripped-down language, floating voices, physical detail, and the formative experience of encountering a literature that seemed to open onto an entirely different world.Much of the conversation centres on what it means to write a first novel. Mark reflects on the pressure and preciousness of the debut: the sense that a first book announces a…

*- Both out lists are pasted below -*Please help us to keep having these conversations by supporting us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/solomonsmith/membershipIn this video Jack and Milo discuss their favourite works of fiction decade by decade, starting in 1800 and going 200 years, decade by decade, until they reach the borders of our present century. If you would like to be interviewed by us about your favourite books, please send an email.1800sJack: Michael Kohlhaas - Heinrich Von KleistMilo: Heinrich Von Ofterdingen - Novalis1810sJack: Frankenstein - Mary ShelleyMilo: Persuasion - Jane Austen1820sJack: Don Juan - George Gordon Byron (If only prose allowed, The Red and the Black - Stendhal)Milo: The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr - ETA Hoffmann1830sJack: The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym - Edgar Allan PoeMilo - Nevsky Prospect - Nikolai Gogol1840sJack: Wuthering Heights - Emily BrontëMilo: Mr. Prokharchin - Fyodor Dostoevsky1850sJack: David Copperfield - Charles DickensMilo: The Whale -…

Please help us to keep having these conversations by supporting us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/solomonsmith/membershipIn this conversation, David Bentley Hart joins Jack and Milo to discuss among the most dangerous and controversial of all questions: where does morality come from? Is morality an evolutionary strategy for accruing power, or are love and compassion woven into the structure of being?In philosophical, theological, literary, and evolutionary terms, Hart discusses the origins of moral instincts in humans and animals, the role of altruism and compassion in nature, and why he believes reductive accounts of morality ultimately fail to explain human experience. We talk about Nietzsche, Darwin, Dawkins, cooperation in nature, and the limits of evolutionary psychology.Hart also reflects on Christianity’s moral revolution and argues that Christ represented a profound interruption in the moral imagination of the ancient world—placing the poor, the rejected, and the vulnerable at the center of…

Please help us to keep having these conversations by supporting us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/solomonsmith/membershipIn this long-form conversation, Milo and Jack speak with translator Simon Pare about the challenge of translating The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann for Oxford World’s Classics.This discussion explores the language, style, and enormous technical challenges behind bringing one of the greatest novels of the 20th century into English. Simon discusses his new 2026 translation of The Magic Mountain, the legacy of earlier translators, and the strange experience of living inside Mann’s vast novel while translating it.Topics include:• Why Thomas Mann is so difficult to translate• The challenge of translating The Magic Mountain’s long German sentences• Hans Castorp, time, and the atmosphere of Davos• Translation choices, compromises, and literary voice• Settembrini, Naphta, Behrens, and Peeperkorn’s speech styles• The legacy of H. T. Lowe-Porter and later English translations• Translation…

Please help us to keep having these conversations by supporting us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/solomonsmith/membershipThis long-form conversation explores the New Testament, the four Gospels, and the problem of biblical interpretation with New Testament scholar John Nelson. Together we examine contradiction, canon, authorship, apocalyptic expectation, and the strange literary texture of early Christian scripture.A recurring theme throughout the discussion is the idea that contradiction may not weaken scripture, but deepen it. Rather than flattening the Gospels into a single harmonized account, we explore the possibility that their tensions, disagreements, and competing emphases are precisely what make them intellectually and spiritually alive. The Gospels become less a single voice than a conversation unfolding across texts, communities, and centuries.We also explore:The collapse of biblical literalism and reconstruction of faithWhy the Gospels disagree on the date of Jesus’ deathThe “Messianic…

Please help us to keep having these conversations by supporting us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/solomonsmith/membershipThere is nothing more intimate than reading.A book is not just paper, ink -- it isn't just an information-convoybelt. Somehow, through a handful of symbols, another consciousness begins speaking inside your mind. Across centuries, across languages, across death — reading allows one soul to inhabit another.In this conversation, Professor Brian Cummings joins Jack and Milo to explore the strange power of books, writing, and reading.What was intended as a discussion about the history of the book — from scrolls and manuscripts to Shakespeare’s First Folio — became something much richer and stranger: a philosophical exploration of consciousness, memory, religion, imagination, and why human beings treat books as almost sacred objects.We discuss:• Why reading feels like experiencing another soul• Plato, Aristotle, and the philosophy of writing• Shakespeare and the invention of literary…

Please help us to keep having these conversations by supporting us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/solomonsmith/membershipThis long-form conversation explores medieval travel, pilgrimage, and imagination with Professor Anthony Bale (University of Cambridge). We examine how people in the Middle Ages understood a world they knew to be vast, real, and inhabited—yet only partially accessible, navigable, or comprehensible.A central theme is the tension between knowledge and uncertainty. Medieval travellers were often moving through spaces that were both physically real and imaginatively constructed: Jerusalem as both a city and a spiritual landscape; distant regions like Ethiopia or India as places shaped as much by myth as by experience. Travel writing reflects this duality—combining observation, theology, hearsay, and invention in ways that resist modern distinctions between fact and fiction.We also explore:* The difference between migration and “travel” as a chosen, meaningful journey* Pilgrimage as both…

Please help us to keep having these conversations by supporting us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/solomonsmith/membershipThis long-form interview explores the nature of devotional poetry in the 17th century, focusing on major figures such as John Donne, George Herbert, and their contemporaries. Together with Professor Helen Wilcox (Bangor University), we examine how early modern poets grappled with one of the central paradoxes of religious writing: the sense that language is both essential and ultimately insufficient to express God.A recurring theme in this discussion is the idea that God exceeds language. Even the most inventive and intellectually rigorous poets—Donne with his metaphysical conceits, Herbert with his formal precision—acknowledge a limit to expression. Poetry becomes an act of striving: an attempt to articulate the divine while recognizing that it can never be fully contained in words.We also explore: The relationship between devotional poetry and prayer The overlap between love poetry…

00:00:00 Introduction00:06:00 Becky arrives - Cambridge slander00:11:25 London slander00:15:45 The Middle Ages00:19:05 Actual beginning of interview00:29:05 The intellect, the imagination00:40:27 Teaching the Cloud00:53:16 Words for God - Om - Words for Flowers01:06:00 Many religions stuffed in one big bag01:20:30 To love language, love the world, yet go beyond it01:35:00 Meditation as preparation for death01:43:29 The Cloud as a practice01:53:30 Bible study as an intense book-club02:00:10 Give yourself to the void02:08:30 A single moment of reality is worth eternity02:11:47 A composition based on Cloud

Please help up to keep these conversations going, and join our reading community, by supporting us over on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/c/solomonsmith/membershipHow much do movies (especially schlocky movies) really shape what we believe?In this episode of Solomon & Smith, we sit down with religious studies professor Dr. Joe Lacock to talk about how horror films like The Exorcist didn’t just reflect culture—they changed it.We speak about the rise of modern exorcisms, figures like the Bradys (infleunce for the Conjuring franchise) the spread of the satanic panic, and other conspiracy theories, such as the Lizard people. We break down the surprising feedback loop between pop culture and real-world belief systems.How does entertainment quietly influence how millions of people see reality itself?What We Cover: How The Exorcist influenced real exorcism practices Why satanic panic took off in America The link between horror films and religious belief How media shapes fear, faith, and conspiracy thinking Why…

Please help up to keep these conversations going, and join our reading community, by supporting us over on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/c/solomonsmith/membershipIn this episode we talk to Professor Sue Niebrzydowski (Bangor) about Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe—two women who claimed to experience intense visions of the divine, but whose lives could not have been more different. Julian's visions drove her into intense isolation as an anchorite—and Margery Kempe's threw her out into the world, to travel, preached, and openly shar her experiences.The hidden world of anchorites and medieval solitudePublic vs private expressions of faithMysticism, madness, and medieval psychologyHow society judged female visionariesThe origins of some of the earliest writing by women in EnglishHow people distinguished God visions from Devil visions from mental illness

Please help up to keep these conversations going, and join our reading community, by supporting us over on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/c/solomonsmith/membershipModern civilisation: is it best explained by philosophy—or by myth?In this conversation we talk about Goethe’s Faust, Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, the everlasting crisis of Western civilization, and the philosophy doomscape of modern academia. Faust captures the restless drive that defines the modern world: the desire to know everything, experience everything, and reshape reality itself. Nietzsche interrogates the same drive at greater length, in greater depth.We discuss:• Faust and modernity• Goethe, Nietzsche, and nihilism• Why everyone thinks Nietzsche’s Übermensch is about them• Whether universities are still the right place for philosophy• The permanent, everlasting crisis of meaning in the Evening Lands• Technology and power• Is Nietzsche optimistic?If you enjoy conversations about dead German men, consider subscribing and supporting the…

Please help us to keep having these conversations by supporting us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/solomonsmith/membershipA discussion with composer Samuel Andreyev about one of the central questions in creativity: Should artists refine one definitive style… or constantly try to reinvent themselves?The conversation introduces the idea of the mono-artist vs the poly-artist. A mono-artist finds a form and spends a lifetime refining it. A poly-artist evolves across styles, mediums, and artistic languages.We discuss composers like Stravinsky, Webern, Bach, Carter, and Messaien, as well as a host of examples from other forms, from film, painting, and literature.The discussion explores:• Why some artists need constant change to stay creative• Why others need to deepen a single artistic language• The pressures artists face from institutions, audiences, and markets• How commercial and institutional systems shape artistic production• Why many artists struggle with expectations and “branding”00:00:00…

Please help us to keep having these conversations by supporting us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/solomonsmith/membershipNapoleon (1927), the monumental silent film directed by Abel Gance is frequently (and correctly) described as one of the most astonishing, awe-inspiring achievements in the history of cinema.Joined by small-handed essayist and fiction writer (and the sole inventor of Google Maps) Cecily Carver, Milo and Jack discuss why this five-and-a-half-hour epic about Napoleon Bonaparte (a Corsican man) remains insanely electrifying a century later. What makes Napoleon feel less like a historical drama and more like an operatic explosion of cinematic ecstasy? Is it fascist propaganda? Is it a prototype of the modern blockbuster? Is it the final, triumphant eruption of silent cinema before the apocalypse of sound, which murdered the medium forever?Topics include: Napoleon as “Great Man” and metaphysical force The French Revolution (what was all that about?) Abel Gance’s radical visual…

orbs and gems wedge here - https://www.patreon.com/cw/SolomonSmith/membershipIn this episode, we talk with Sean McCleod about the theological, cultural, and political logic behind contemporary belief in demon possession, spiritual warfare, and deliverance ministries within Third Wave Evangelicalism.How did demons return to the center of American religious life? What distinguishes Third Wave charismatic Demonology from earlier Pentecostal or Catholic demon-hunting? And how does the language of spiritual warfare intersect with neoliberal ideas about free will, agency, responsibility, and selfhood?Drawing from the sociology of religion, political theology, and cultural history, this conversation explores: The rise of Third Wave Evangelicalism and charismatic Christianity Deliverance ministry and modern exorcism practices Generational curses and the psychology of spiritual warfare The legacy of the 1980s Satanic Panic Prosperity gospel theology and market-oriented spirituality Neoliberalism and the construction…

Please consider supporting us over on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/SolomonSmith/membershipIn this long-form conversation, we look at how Harold Bloom’s Anxiety of Influence applies to cinema — and what it might reveal about modern filmmakers.Bloom argued that strong artists are “born in debt,” and must struggle against the overwhelming presence of their creative fathers. What happens when we apply this idea to movies?From Alfred Hitchcock to David Lynch, from Paul Thomas Anderson to Quentin Tarantino, we trace how directors wrestle with their influences — escaping them, misreading them, and sometimes swallowing them whole.We discuss: Bloom’s concept of “creative misprision” The idea of artistic “fathers” in film history Whether originality is still possible The 90s video store generation of directors The psychological burden of influence Cinema as an ongoing act of reinterpretationIs every filmmaker haunted?Is influence something to escape — or something to transform?If you’re interested in film…

If you’d like to support the channel (gold bars, gemstones, rare earth rocks accepted), check out the Patreon link: www.patreon.com/c/SolomonSmith/membershipWelcome back to Solomon and Smith — keep it juicy, large boys.In this second part of our deep dive into William Blake, we’re joined by Jodie Marley for a rich, wide-ranging conversation on prophecy, vision, mysticism, and the strange, electric Blakeopantheon.Building on our earlier discussion with Mark Vernon, we explore Blake through the lens of innocence and experience, satire and sincerity, heaven and hell. What does it mean for Blake to “see” something? Did he believe his visions were literal? Or are they poetic frameworks for imagination and revelation?We dig into: Blake’s Marriage of Heaven and Hell and its critique of Emanuel Swedenborg Biblical prophecy, including Isaiah’s vision in Book of Isaiah Millenarian movements of the 18th century Visionary experience vs prophetic authority The occult revival and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn W.…

👉 Support the channel on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/c/solomonsmith/membershipWilliam Blake still awes and unsettles us. In this long-form discussion, Mark Vernon — psychotherapist, author, and former Anglican priest — joins Milo and Jack for a deep exploration of Blake’s religious imagination, visionary cosmology, and misunderstood relationship to Christianity.Together we explore Blake’s prophetic works Milton and Jerusalem. We ask whether Blake changed his mind after the French Revolution, or whether a single spiritual vision runs through his entire oeuvre. We examine Blake’s critique of deism, mechanistic science, and moralism, his engagement with numbers and eternity, and his insistence that imagination is not fantasy but a mode of truth.This conversation moves through Blake’s theology, his rejection of the theological currents of his day, his fascination with prophecy (including failed prophecy), and his enduring relevance in a disenchanted modern world. Along the way, we touch on Newton, Milton,…